Technology is unleashing an unprecedented pace of business disruption and evolution, with the path littered with roadkill of companies which missed the key trends. To address this challenge, we at mobileLIVE have come up with our annual set of predictions; carefully collated through analysis, interviews, and research in the global Technology, Media and Telecommunication space. As most businesses wrestle with difficult investment, product, and digital transformation decisions, we hope the following can help with their decision-making paradigms for future growth.

The hype around AI will continue to grow by leaps and bounds, and for a good reason. However, AI is becoming somewhat synonymous with automation, and it’s imperative to not lose sight of the continuum; i.e. manual processes and decision making on one end of the spectrum and AI driven the other, and this journey that corporates must traverse

Cloud based companies will start offering blocks of AI for consumption, abstracting the complexity associated with creating the infrastructure et al. Google, Amazon, Microsoft and IBM will continue leading the way with their Asian counterparts not very far behind. Globally significant investments ($109BN by China alone) will continue to be made through acquisitions, partnerships and research, and we foresee 15-20% of the global GDP being linked to AI-related industries by 2025; despite Stephen Hawking calling it the “worst mistake in history

Not just that, the average developer working on AI will earn $300k a year. Got a teenage kid? Get them coding

Bitcoins have gone from a $1000/unit to over $14K in under 12 months, and there is no stopping it. The story might not be as fairy-tailish for the others (Ethereum, Hyperledger, R3C, and Ripple) but a very fascinating one nonetheless. However, it's all been brought to life by the shared ledger concept of blockchain

In the next 12-18 months, we expect multiple viable block-chain based markets to be commercialized across a myriad of industries (Banking, Supply Chain etc.)

Heavy investment in technology and governance will be continued to be made and almost every CXO wondering if they have the right working group in place to chart progress, readiness and run scenarios across the organization

Most CTO’s are presently focussed on implementing IT architectures that enable quick development and launch of digital products and services, while at the same time aggressively modernize their legacy infrastructure

This digital transformative architecture is heavily anchored on having an external facing, API enabled, and data driven intelligent platforms. Organizations that can re-architect for scale on this core platform will be the most likely to emerge as digital native enterprises in the near term. As the re-platforming exercise picks up steam, we will also find enterprises gravitating towards “Common Cloud based platforms” rather than build traditional bespoke ones

These platforms will not only provide a foundation to improve processes, but also help them become “Quantified Enterprises” with deep insights. For smart adopters, we may see 2x to 5x business acceleration, compared to others

In an attempt to engage the customer more effectively, companies have started to invest heavily in creating immersive experiences (CX). We believe augmented reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) will transform CX in unimaginable ways ; however, it will be businesses and field services which will get the maximum benefit in the short term. Having the ability to do remote image overlay, accessing technical updates, and visual communication with supervisors and SME’s will dramatically improve operational efficiency. AR is well on its way to become the de facto “reality computing” platform, helping to generate $70+B in revenue by 2021

We also anticipate by 2021, nearly 60-70% of all interactions with machines would have transformed significantly from where it stands today. Bot based mind reading, gesture control, and voice interaction would be the name of the game. To that end, we will start seeing voice activated systems become more conversational, and will begin to have some level of sentiment analysis and AI built in

Owning cars, while they live in urban centres, as autonomous vehicles and ride sharing business models continue to have wide scale adoption

Having brick and mortar banks, as digital banking provides a lot more value, efficiency, and relevance to their lifestyles

Subconscious bias could very well be creeping into self-teaching machines, and a need for an audit trail as to how and why that bias was created would be necessary. Take for example a self-driving car choosing to crash into people of one ethnicity and saving people from another, as a likely scenario. Governments should be scrambling to regulate AI, but we don’t see any of it yet

If the Equifax breach from 2017 or the 201 DDoS attack from Oct 2016 was anything to go by, we are only beginning to see how vulnerable our systems really are! It seems, in a relatively short time we’ve taken a system built to resist destruction by nuclear weapons and made it vulnerable to toasters

SDN delivers the agility, flexibility, and programmability that align with the demands on the network today. It is now beginning to get adoption in a growing number of enterprise datacenters across a broad range of vertical market; and we expect the market to increase at a 50-60% CAGR, over the next few years

A successful 5G launch is the core focus of almost all global wireless operators, today. However, the lack of standards and availability of any 5G handset, would peg a wide scale launch to be at least 5-7 years out

Wi-Fi continues to explode, with an incredible 5700% growth in number of hotspots since 2013, with an average of “One Wi-Fi hotspot for every 5 people” in US and Canada

With the launch of NB-IOT and 3GPP standardized LTE-M; we should start to see the beginning of the end for some of the proprietary platforms being used for LPWAN

The concept of a programmable SIM (eSIM) will continue to gain market acceptance, and OEM’s would most certainly want to use them to reduce complexity associated with global launches of connected devices/cars

We expect advertising dollars to stay flat or grow very moderately in the next financial year. A collective of reasons forming the basis of it: from Customers avoiding ads; the cost of wasted ads on bots and major brands announcing substantial drop in ad spending

TV viewership for people 35 and under will continue to collapse at alarming levels (-30%), however consumption of digital media continues to explode

Digital radio will continue to grow steadily, with penetration surpassing 55% in 2018

There will be a lot of noise around Digital content platforms (Facebook etc.) having to start taking responsibility for some of the content they distribute

2018 is going to be an amazing year for IoT, when the promise starts to get delivered, across industries and domains

IoT has unlocked the potential of connected cars and we will start to see wider calls for TaaS (Transportation as a Service) using fully automated EV vehicles in 2018. Pre-TaaS platform providers like Uber, Lyft, and Didi are already engaged, and others will join this high-speed race in this Winners-take-all market

IoT Developers need low implementation, maintenance and adoptions costs, ability to GTM quickly with global reach- a clear cut case for increased cloud usage. However, because they also need quick decision making and low latency (Emergency, autonomous cars and security use cases) we will see the increased adoption of edge computing in 2018

Wearables will continue to see increased adoption, with more devices for people with disabilities. Also, a couple of OEM’s will come out with smart glasses, but in a different mould than the legacy googles “glassholes”

The combination of IoT, Big Data, AI, AR/VR, Blockchain, Nano-tech, 3D Printing, Robotics anchored on cloud, mobile and social changes is leading to an unprecedented pace of innovation and new economic paradigms. It’s just not the pace at which companies are becoming sensations, Angry bird took 35 days to hit 50M customers, but the accelerated speed at which these large corporate houses have declined from being the gold standard to being a Business School Case Study, on what not to do. Blockbuster really went from having a $4BN top-line to $0 in 1 year.

We anticipate of the fortune 500 today:

Only 10% will survive the next 25 years

95% of them will stall because of lack of focus and under-investment in digital transformation. Only 6% will be able to recover from it

Accessibility Plan & Policy

This five year accessibility plan (2014 - 2018) outlines the policies and actions that mobileLIVE will put in place to improve opportunities for people with disabilities.

Statement of Commitment

mobileLIVE is committed to treating all people in a way that allows them to maintain their dignity and independence. We believe in integration and equal opportunity. We are committed to meeting the needs of people with disabilities in a timely manner, and will do so by preventing and removing barriers to accessibility and meeting accessibility requirements under the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA).

Accessible Emergency Information

mobileLIVE is committed to providing the customers and clients with publicly available emergency information in an accessible way upon request. We will also provide employees with disabilities with individualized emergency response information when necessary.

Training

mobileLIVE will provide training to employees, volunteers and other staff members on Ontario's accessibility laws and on the Human Rights Code as it relates to people with disabilities. Training will be provided in a way that best suits the duties of employees, interns, T4 Contractors and other staff members.

mobileLIVE will take the following steps to ensure employees are provided with the training needed to meet Ontario's accessible laws by January 1, 2015.

Provide online training on how to deal with customers with disability

Conduct Quiz

Information and Communications

mobileLIVE is committed to meeting the communication needs of people with disabilities. We will consult with people with disabilities to determine their information and communication needs.

mobileLIVE will take required steps to make all new websites and content on those sites conform to WCAG 2.0, Level A by January 1, 2014.

mobileLIVE will take the steps to make ensure existing feedback processes are accessible to people with disabilities upon request by January 1, 2015.

mobileLIVE will take the steps to make sure all publicly available information is made accessible upon request by January 1, 2016.

mobileLIVE will take the steps to make all websites and content conform with WCAG 2.0, Level AA by January 1, 2018.

Employment

mobileLIVE committed to fair and accessible employment practices.

mobileLIVE will take the following steps to notify the public and staff that, when requested, mobileLIVE will accommodate people with disabilities during the recruitment and assessment processes and when people are hired.

mobileLIVE will take the steps to develop and put in place a process for developing individual accommodation plans and return-to-work policies for employees that have been absent due to a disability.

mobileLIVE will take the steps to ensure the accessibility needs of employees with disabilities are taken into account if mobileLIVE is using performance management, career development and redeployment processes.

mobileLIVE will take the steps to prevent and remove other accessibility barriers identified.